Metal Reviews

All 'intellectual' arguments aside I wonder what cultural struggles will ensue when Islam and the muslims become even more populous in Europe.

Selfish

And what if your cultural identity includes a basic value of tolerance (culture is more than architecture you know)? Is that self-contradictory? Or is it just, that conservatives tend to interpret cultural identity as "keeping our entire country petrified as a museum to display the state of architectural integration 50 years ago" instead of an actual living and breathing culture. Culture is a dynamic concept. What you call your culture today is a result of thousands of years influences from (and responses to) many different conditions, encounters and environments. The moment that you decide that your culture can not be further influenced and that it has no new responses to the changing world and times, and put a glass exhibition case around it is the moment where it will truly die. Or at least it will be reduced to a big shallow self-reference of times gone by. How that can be considered patriotism I will never understand.

When Christianity spread from being a middle-eastern sect to being the main religion in Europe it was implemented in many different societies with different cultural contexts. Today Christianity has been integrated with the ancient cultures of Europe to have different expressions and implementations in different countries. I fail to see why it should be a cultural loss if in a thousand years there should be different expressions and implementations of Islam as well in the old cultures of Europe. If anything Christianity has been culturally destructive since it was forcibly implemented many places in Europe with the scope of replacing or assimilating the traditions, customs and weltanschauung of the time with standardisation as a consequence. The construction of mosques and minarets, on the other hand, is focused on the local practitioners of a minority religion the majority of who does not seek to implement Islam in Europe by the sword.

Do Europeans not realize their culture's emergence after the middle ages is solely because of Islamic culture maintaining and improving what classic civilizations achieved?

The point gets hammered home enough in middle school history.

I'm wondering whether I should change my stance on this whole issue, some of the arguments coming from other people in favour of the ban are fucking retarded. RARRR SWISS CULTURE GO HOME BEDUINS NO CAMELS IN STREETS.

Clearly, internet pressure from liberals is enough to change anyone's mind. Today, Varg Vikernes and FrigidSymphony, tomorrow, Osama bin Laden, Ahmadinejad and Karmakosmonaut!

It's not so much my mind changing than a disgust at being associated with those types of close-minded farmer fascists.

Changing your opinion because of the people who share it is a terrific way to run your life, is all I'm saying.

Again, I'm not changing my opinion. It's a partisan issue. I'd like to avoid association with certain people.

Kinda like when I pretend to be right-wing to annoy rio?

If you could see some of the arguments going on around here you'd understand me.

It's always upsetting when no-one understands you.

You definitely could have seen that coming, dude.

Yeah, but I hoped it might not degenerate to such an extent.

Yeah, that's the politically correct bullshit everyone gets in school.

Whatever classical knowledge was preserved in Arabia and Africa was maintained by Christian minorities (and we all know how those minorities fared under the whims of their muslim overlords, but I digress).

But more importantly, the knowledge and prestige of Greece was never gone from Europe. Greek was the language of the New Testament up to the major reformations (those of Gregory VII and such, I believe), there were a series of Greek popes before the Schism of 1054, one of which being Sergius I who was actually of Syrian origin and who founded the Dutch branch of the Church. There were also lots and lots of Byzantine scientists, for the secular side of things, who treacled into the lands of the West. Treacle turned to flood in 1453 when Constantinople fell, so tell me, when did Romanticism spread through Europe? Outside of Northern Italy of course, but they had very close ties with the Byzantines anyway.

Pippin the Short, father to Charlemagne, requisitioned Greek texts from Pope Paul, including Aristoteles, for the education of his daughter (!). Charles the Bald asked the philosopher John Scotus to translate Greek texts of Pseudo-Dionysos the Areopagite. In the Benedictine abbey of Mont Saint-Michel, Aristoteles was translated into Latin before the Arabs got hold of his writings on their conquests. And so forth.

To go out on a limb and cite an explanation to the politically correct bullshit all of us were taught and some of us still believe (but take this with a pinch of salt, as it's a pretty batshit theory): Sigrid Hunke, Himmler's girlfriend thought up the myth of the importance of the Arabs for our culture etc.; the nazis wished to deny the character of the judeo-christian culture, and so greatly magnified the input of the muslims instead. As with most German inventions, the theory found a handy use with the secular thinkers and politicians after the war, and more notably after '68.

Believe what you will of the last paragraph, but there you have it.

Question: do countries such as Saudi Arabia, etc. allow massive cathedrals to dominate their skyline? Or allow foriegn women to wear revealing clothes?
If not, should they?
Why is "tolerance" and "diversity" such a one-way street?
Why is cultural integrity only frowned upon when it is European culture that is wished to be preserved?
This licking the boot that kicks you mentality is the mentality of the cocker spaniel, and frankly, nauseating.

Don't you see? To the left, minarets are not signs of islamisation. They are not signs of freedom of religion. They are not signs of tolerance. They are not signs of multiculturalism. They are precursors to the hammer, and to the sickle. They are postcolonial guilt given form.

But as far as I'm concerned, every minaret is an architectural fuck off, a middle finger of brick and concrete, in the face of every person who is content enough with the diversity between people not to need the diversity of cultures.

And cultures stagnating, blah blah. That's exactly the sort of spineless talk I expect these days. Whatever happened to own initiative? Aww, feeling a little too slothful to sketch or play guitar or write something more interesting than this utter drivel about how you need people from half the globe away to blow some lifeforce into your culture? Weakling

My eyebrow has detached itself from its usual place, and scurries further over the top of my head the more I read.

Take my home state, California; every city is balkanized, we have a dozen different languages posted for every thing, and in many areas, the schools are required to teach bi-lingually, sometimes, multi-lingually. There is no "diversity" in those neighborhoods... you have Saigon West, New Bombay and Little Tijuana.
It's bullshit. And the more that come, the more politcal clout they demand.
Illegal immigrants demanding their "rights", marching and protesting, etc.... incredible. I go to Mexico and pull that shit, I get thrown in a hellhole cell and beaten. In fact, only in America and Europe are the native peoples expected to give up their politcal, cultural and social bearing to an invading (for now) minority. Like you said, out of some strange notion that we are supposed to feel this collective guilt. To hell with that noise.

Yes. If only we were like Saudi Arabia! Those are places whose governments have it right and whom we should emulate.

Seriously, guys? Everytime someone pulls the "but if Saudi Arabia won't tolerate multiculturalism, why should we?" I want to cry a lot.

And when I see a minaret, I think to myself: "Say, that is a nice building. It sure beats skyscraper after skyscraper." Just like when I see a nice church, or a nice synagogue, or a nice ice cream parlour. Not "MWAHAHA COMMUNISM AND GUILT MWAHAAHAHA." Jesus Christ you guys have issues.